I often discuss with patients the benefit of taking more regular exercise. Good exercise has so many benefits including increasing your core strength to protect your back, improving cardiovascular fitness and even decreasing anxiety levels. Recently, Bristol Nordic Walking started running classes in Bath, I was curious about this form of exercise so I met director Vicky Welsh to find out more. Here’s what she told me:

“Nordic walking is based entirely on your natural walking pattern but uses two specially designed poles angled backwards to help build your upper body strength and accelerate you forwards.  It comes from cross-country skiing and is very sociable, lots of fun and an extremely effective whole body workout.

Nordic walking, when done properly, can burn up to 46% more calories than regular walking and is a total upper and lower body exercise, using 90% of the body’s muscles.  With good tuition, you can expect to see positive changes in your posture, back health, joints and all over muscle tone, especially in your arms and waist.

To get started you need to learn the correct technique from a qualified Nordic walking instructor. Nordic Walking Bath has a team of two expert instructors, Sarah Lillywhite and Yvonne Bignall.  Together they run four weekly classes, including an evening and Saturday morning class, in Royal Victoria Park. Each class is an hour long and includes an energising warm-up, a good walk, technique tuition, and stretches at the end.  There is a maximum of 16 in a class and there’s no need to bring your own poles as you can borrow from Sarah and Yvonne”.

Visit www.nordicwalkingbath.co.uk or call 07886 885213 to find out more or to book a Beginner workshop.